Joined-up government and privacy in the United Kingdom: managing tensions between data protection and social policy. Part I

The Labour government that came to power in the United Kingdom in 1997 made much of its commitment to ‘joined‐up working’, by which it meant horizontal integration between policies and co‐ordination across services. The particular manner in which it pursued this commitment has led to growing pressure for the sharing of citizens’ personal information among public service agencies. Yet at the same time, Parliament was engaged in implementing the European Data Protection Directive with a new Data Protection Act and the Government was honouring its manifesto commitment to bring the European Convention on Human Rights – including its enshrined right to private life – into domestic law. Government has therefore been obliged to find ways of managing the potential tension between these commitments. There are two analytically distinct dimensions to the arrangements through which this is being attempted. First, the horizontal dimension consists in initiatives that apply across all policy fields, and includes the establishment of cross‐governmental guidelines for implementing data protection law as well as the development of national policy on sharing personal data between public services. In 2002, the government published a major policy paper on data sharing and privacy. By late 2003, its approach to the need for legislation had changed sharply. The second analytically distinct dimension, the vertical dimension, consists in the laws, codes and norms developed in specific policy fields to govern relationships between data sharing and privacy within those fields. This two‐part article discusses these arrangements. Part I analyses the horizontal dimension of the governance of data sharing and privacy. Part II (published in the next issue) examines the vertical dimension in three fields in which tensions between data sharing and privacy have come to the fore: community safety, social security and NHS health care. Four options for the governance of data sharing and privacy are analytically distinguished: (1) seeking to make the two commitments consistent or even mutually reinforcing; (2) mitigating the tensions with detailed guidelines for implementation; (3) allowing data sharing to take precedence over privacy; and (4) allowing privacy to take precedence over data sharing. The article argues that, despite its strong assertion of (1), the government has, in practice, increasingly sought to pursue option (2) and that, in consequence, the vertical dimension has become much more important in shaping the relationship than the horizontal dimension. The articles argue, however, that option (2) is a potentially unstable strategy as well as being unsustainable.     

Mortgage fraud and organized crime in Canada: strategic intelligence brief

Natasha Tusikov, Acting Manager, National Research and Methodology Development Unit, Criminal Intelligence Service Canada - Central Bureau, Intelligence Analysis and Knowledge Development Branch, November 2007     

The Market as a Matter of Money: Denaturalizing Economic Currency in American Constitutional History

Histories of the early American political economy present that world in fractured form, dividing political and constitutional dimensions from economic aspects. The fragmented approach reflects an old, oft-denigrated, but still powerful imagery, one that naturalizes economic activity as a set of myriad spontaneous and individuated exchanges, conducted with a conventional medium, money, and predictably composing a market sphere. The motif and its underlying assumptions in turn dissuade exploration of money and markets as territories of public decision, insulating by neglect the structural power of determinations made there. This essay traces the naturalization motif through a historiography of macroeconomic models of money. It then considers how money, recognized as a dynamics of value, would look if the law structuring it were approached as a complex set of relations that expressed, reiterated, and revised the distribution of authority in society. The early American political economy appears in a different light: money becomes a matter of value and governance at once, and therefore a crucial area of constitutional debate. Through that medium, the political economy of early America is transformed not once but repeatedly, from a mercantilist to a domestic paper to a liberal capitalist form.     

The highs and lows of working with sexual offenders: A New Zealand perspective

Abstract

The positive effects on clinicians responsible for the treatment of sexual offenders are little understood. The few available studies have focused upon the negative sequelae of this work. The current study of clinicians working therapeutically with sexual offenders at a community-based organization aimed for a more balanced picture of the effects of sex offender treatment provision. Using qualitative methods, both negative and positive aspects of this work emerged within three main themes: taking an optimistic perspective, working for community outcomes and supportive agency culture. Although the study revealed many challenges for therapists, these were found to be counterbalanced against rewards, affording a high degree of personal and professional fulfilment from working within this field.